3Cinteractive Blog

The numerous options in mobile marketing have confused marketing offices. From native handset applications to MMS and SMS, each technology has its ups and downs.
Because they occur on the handset and can leverage other applications or hardware features (e.g. GPS), native applications offer the most flexibility for user interaction. But, native applications, are subject to one-time installs, and users rarely remember to update their software.
The next bet for content delivery is MMS, and while that is a great medium, the technology isn’t ubiquitous across the major carriers. SMS, the plain text sibling of MMS, is ubiquitous but many marketers shy away because of the misconception that SMS lacks the full package.
Digging a bit further, marketers will jump back to WAP only to find that it too struggles to provide ubiquitous experience end-users. This is partially a result of the lack of standardized browsers, and that Verizon Wireless blocks WAP content downloads to their handsets.
So, after all this research, somehow, handset applications come away with the biggest appeal. They’re fast, they leverage the handset’s features, and they can handle all the fun content without battling a messaging platform. Which leaves me asking… how good was this research?! Yes, a handset application can do all that and the end-users – who actually download it - would love it, but why eliminate such a large audience with all the red tape?
Don’t get me wrong, mobile applications are cool - I had a few before I jumped to the iPhone – but the mobile phone is about speed and convenience. The traditional method of finding and downloading an application has too many hurdles – the iPhone AppStore will change this.

In the same way that traditional media operates, successful mobile marketing is about having compelling enough content to attract users to want more. Once marketers are able to pull together users with compelling content, they will know their interests. The buzz around mobile marketing is centered on accessibility, not a really bad-ass gaming platform. An end user that downloads a handset application is not as accessible as an end-user that is opted-in to your SMS content stream.
Marketers are so tied up in the “features” of the differing mobile technologies that they forget the basics: eliminating over 30% of your market (WAP), creating a multitude of hoops (handset applications), or not being able to deliver (MMS) is not a good start. Mobile marketing, particularly SMS, is the most successfully converting form of the most basic marketing principle: create and manage lists of interested users.
While SMS may not be able to deliver a ground breaking mobile game, it can deliver the same content, in the same form, across all carriers and handsets. For the cold pressed content marketers: ringtones, wallpapers, and games are options provided by WAP, but these should be extensions of the service and not the opening feature.
Marketers need to begin their mobile marketing initiatives with the biggest funnel: SMS. From there, they will have captured the biggest list of mobile users and will be able to directly contact them when the other technologies, like MMS, catch-up.